


time can't wash this off

by turnerandkane



Category: Silicon Valley (TV), Veep
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 22:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7989082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnerandkane/pseuds/turnerandkane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she first hears that they are taking a trip to Silicon Valley, Amy thinks of Monica immediately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	time can't wash this off

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during episode 3x04 of Veep

When she first hears that they are taking a trip to Silicon Valley, Amy thinks of Monica immediately. Memories come into her consciousness unbidden like a film playing back her past. It’s almost alarming how quickly her mind is flooded with images of her, how vividly she seems to remember every interaction despite the twelve years that have passed since they saw each other last. 

“What’s up with you?” Dan asks, bringing her back to the present. 

“I have a friend from college who lives in Palo Alto,” she explains, knowing full well that “friend” was never quite the right term. “Maybe I’ll see them.”

 

Twelve years is a long time, Amy realizes the more she thinks about it. Plenty of time for someone to change a lot, and possibly not care about or even remember someone they used to know. She’s being a little dramatic, she chides herself; there’s no way Monica doesn’t remember her. But whether she wants to see her is a whole other story. Whether Amy wants to see her is a complicated question as well, for that matter. She mulls it over all night after Selina tells them about the trip, and she finds herself no closer to a decision in the morning. She considers flipping a coin, but she owes Monica more than that.

By the time they’re actually in Silicon Valley, Amy is still going back and forth over whether she should text her. She should focus on Selina, she tells herself, but then again, she’s so close, and it seems silly to close a gap of 2,847 miles without even saying hello. Then again, Selina needs her, but then again…

It’s mid-afternoon before the realization that if she doesn’t say something soon she’s going to lose her chance prompts her to ask Selina if she can have a few hours off in the evening.

She gets flack for it, of course, really more from Dan than from Selina, as Dan suspects her “college friend” is an ex-boyfriend (she lets him think it; there’s no downside for her, and it’s really not terribly far from the truth). But ultimately her request is granted. She types out a message and stares at it for at least five minutes before sending it. She makes sure it gets delivered before locking her phone and trying to calm the nerves that have been steadily increasing since they arrived in California. When her phone buzzes with a reply, she has to compose herself before she can look at it, but when she does, for the first time in quite a while, she smiles.

 

Monica is shocked to hear from Amy, to say the least. It had occurred to her that the Vice President being in town likely meant that Amy was also in town, but she had avoided thinking too much about it. So when she gets a message that says, “I’m in town with the veep, wanna get a drink tonight?” she is pleasantly surprised. She had thought about asking herself, but past experience taught her it was best to let Amy make the first move.

“I’d love to,” she texts back, and recommends a wine bar where they can meet up. Amy agrees, and suddenly Monica is counting down the hours until 8 o’clock, feeling something she hasn’t felt since college.

*

Monica and Amy didn’t officially meet until they were sophomores at George Washington University, although Monica remembered seeing Amy during rush her first year. But Monica pledged Alpha Phi, and Amy didn’t end up joining anywhere, so their paths didn’t cross again until they became lab partners when they were both fulfilling their gen-ed science requirement. 

Monica would admit that, at first, she was a bit put off by Amy. It was several weeks before they ever had a casual conversation, because Amy was always laser focused on the task at hand and made no time for small talk. For a time, this was refreshing to Monica, who spent the majority of her life around other sorority girls participating in social events where no one ever stopped talking. Still, she was used to being able to make friends with people easily, and after a while she began to consider Amy a challenge. She decided she would turn this closed-off girl into a friend somehow, before their partnership ended. It wasn’t until an assignment required them to work together outside of class that Monica got her chance to strike.

They met up at Amy’s dorm, because Monica lived in her sorority house with no privacy and Amy’s roommate had dropped out far enough after the beginning of the semester that she hadn’t been assigned a new one. It was still an unreasonably small room, however, so the pair wound up sitting on the floor with their materials spread out around them in the most economic use of space they could achieve. They worked for several hours before Monica suggested they order food.

Amy looked confused at the concept, like it hadn’t occurred to her to eat in quite some time, and judging by her thin frame it was possible that really was the case. Monica managed to talk her into ordering a pizza, and when they finished their assignment before it arrived and were left with nothing academic to discuss, Monica made her move. 

She started with the basics: where are you from, why did you pick George Washington, what do you want to do when you graduate, etc. Amy answered them all without ever asking for the same information from Monica, which from anyone else Monica would have considered rude, but she suspected more and more as the conversation went on that Amy just had no idea how to make small talk.

“I’m from Baltimore,” she offered at a lull in the conversation, and Amy nodded. “You didn’t ask me when I asked you,” Monica prodded.

“Damn, sorry,” Amy said, “I don’t mean to be rude I just-“

“Don’t talk to people casually ever?” Monica offered.

Amy nodded and grinned sheepishly, and Monica laughed. “It’s okay,” she said, “I picked up on it.”

“Okay, let me try,” Amy said, turning slightly to look Monica in the face instead of avoiding her eye as she’d been doing the entire night. “What do you want to do when you graduate?”

“I don’t know, honestly,” Monica replied, “That’s bad but. The truth. I’m a business major because I didn’t know what else to be. I’d like to do something meaningful someday I guess, but that’s pretty vague. You can’t apply for a job as ‘Meaningful Contributor to Society.’” 

“I’m sure you’ll do fine.” Amy said.

“How can you say that?” Monica asked, “you barely know me.”

“Yeah, but you seem totally capable. You’re all smart and strong and independent and everything. You’ll do whatever you want.”

“Thanks,” Monica said slowly, taken aback by the compliment. “Okay, my turn again. Are you seeing anyone?”

Amy laughed out loud. 

“Do I seem like someone who would be seeing anyone?”

“It was worth asking.”

“Okay, what about you?” Amy asked, “are you seeing anyone?”

“Sort of,” Monica said.

“Elaborate.”

“There’s a guy. We’ve hooked a few times. You know how it is.”

“I definitely don’t,” Amy reminded her.

Monica looked her over for a moment and grinned. “Do you want to find out?” she asked.

 

Three days later, Amy was at a frat party.

It had taken a huge amount of arm twisting from Monica, but she’d agreed to attend on the condition that Monica not leave her side for the entire night. Monica swore on pain of death she would never be alone, and Amy finally conceded that yes, it was about time she had some traditional college experiences. 

Five minutes into her first traditional college experience she decided they were incredibly overrated. 

Everything was too loud, everyone was too drunk, and if she hadn’t made a promise to Monica that she’d stick around for at least an hour she would have already been gone.

But she had promised, and she felt particularly compelled to keep that promise. Amy hadn’t really made any friends since she’d come to college, and it didn’t really bother her. She’d never been someone who needed a whole lot of social interaction; she had enough to focus on with her schoolwork. But Monica had reached out, and Amy was oddly touched by it, so she decided the least she could do was spend a little time at a frat party. It wasn’t the end of the world.

Resigned to her fate, Amy had a drink. And another. And a shot. And another. She realized at some point that she was probably past her one-hour mark and could now excuse herself from the party without guilt, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted to anymore.

The reason for her change of heart was not that she suddenly loved being surrounded by many screaming drunk people; that part definitely hadn’t grown on her. What compelled her to stay was Monica, who true to her word had not strayed from her side all night.

Amy wasn’t just grateful to Monica for reaching out to her, she realized as they spent more time together. She actually liked her. They had more in common than Amy would have first suspected; they were both very driven, they both liked to keep their personal lives as uncomplicated as possible, and they both liked to playfully mock their drunk peers in the same slightly condescending but ultimately not too judgmental tone. Amy found herself thinking that she might be willing to put up with a fair number of frat parties if she got to spend them hanging out with Monica.

Monica was also quite pretty, Amy consciously realized at one point while she watched her dance. She had a confidence Amy knew she’d never possess, and it allowed her to be warm and open which made her even more attractive. On this particular evening she was also wearing a crop top, and she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail when the room got too warm. Amy realized after a time that she was staring, but she was drunk enough that she couldn’t really bring herself to be properly ashamed of it. 

Amy had never really considered whether she liked girls. They were mostly good looking, she supposed, and if she was being honest, she rarely felt a pull to be romantically or sexually involved with anyone, men or women, so it never really seemed to matter much. But free of some of her usual inhibitions, she could admit to herself that she was attracted to Monica. Under ordinary circumstances, this might have freaked her out, but her night had been so far removed from her day-to-day life that she took the revelation in stride. 

How she got from realizing she was attracted to Monica to making out with her in an upstairs bedroom was still a bit of a mystery to her, but it just became one more thing she accepted without questioning it. Who dragged who from the living room to the stairwell around other couples getting too intimate in the public space, who discovered the empty bedroom and locked the door behind them, who pressed their lips to whose first was all a blur, but it didn’t feel like it mattered. Something felt right about it, like they fit together in a way Amy hadn’t experienced in her, admittedly limited, romantic background. Even if it never went past this night, past the walls of this bedroom, and despite her overwhelming anxiety about everything that ever happened in her life, she felt confident she wasn’t going to regret it in the morning.

 

After the party, Amy and Monica became real friends. They didn’t mention how the night had ended, not because they felt awkward about it but because it seemed unnecessary after the fact. It had happened and now it was over and there was no reason to discuss it. Monica got more exclusive with the boy she was “sort of” seeing, and as she spent more time with Monica and her other friends Amy found herself going on her fair share of dates as well.

When it came time to decide on housing for junior year, Monica mentioned pointedly one day that she was tired of living in the sorority house. Amy was grateful to be permitted to be the one offering a solution to a problem by asking Monica to live with her; Monica had, in many ways, become a guide for Amy through the parts of college life she just wasn’t cut out for. She was incredibly fond of her for this, of course, and it was nice to feel like she brought something to the table as well, although she sometimes found it hard to imagine what. 

The pair moved into a small apartment just off campus that had carpet from the 70s and a water damage stain in the kitchen ceiling that their landlord insisted was from an old leak, but that they both agreed after living there only a few weeks was spreading. It was no one’s dream home, but it was their place, and they liked it.

They’d been living together for about a month when they slept together the first time.

Monica had just broken up with her boyfriend. She’d found out he was cheating on her, but truth be told she was grateful for the excuse to end it. She told Amy she had been wanting to break it off for weeks but was worried about their friends picking and choosing sides. Now that he was the bad guy, she didn’t have to worry anymore.

This is what she announced they were celebrating when she brought home enough alcohol for them to have a small party and insisted they were going to drink it between the two of them.

“We never have any fun anymore,” she told Amy, “and I know you don’t like parties so let’s just get drunk here. We can watch a movie or something. It’ll be good.”

Amy really didn’t take much convincing. The promise of spending the evening in with Monica was enough of a draw on its own. Amy was also not-quite-secretly thrilled about Monica’s breakup; she had never cared for her boyfriend for no good reason in particular, and she felt vindicated slightly at the revelation that she’d been right about him. That her dislike might have had more to do with her personal feelings for Monica than with any intuition she had about the boyfriend was not something she allowed herself to think too hard about. 

In any case, it no longer mattered. Monica poured them each a glass of wine and they toasted to her freedom and settled in to watch Star Wars, a favorite of Monica’s that Amy didn’t like to admit to enjoying as much as she did. A few glasses of wine later Amy reached the bold, impulsive stage of drunkenness she had been in when they made out at the frat party almost a year before, but this time there was no confusion about who initiated.

Amy watched Monica for several minutes before Monica noticed her looking. She turned and smiled at her. Amy smiled back and reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear. Monica, who had been in the process of raising her glass to her lips for another sip, stopped and slowly put her glass down on the end table next to the couch. Amy put hers down as well, and leaned in slowly to give Monica the opportunity to turn away.

Monica didn’t, and a few minutes later they were making their way to her bedroom with an intent that had been absent in their first encounter. It should have felt more awkward, Amy thought later; they were taking a risk, shifting their relationship in a way they might not be able to come back from. But just like the first time, Amy didn’t question what happened. Just like before, they seemed to fit together naturally, and when they woke up together the next morning they smiled at each other and got up to make breakfast.

 

It became a fairly regular occurrence; neither of them would have said they were dating, but they certainly weren’t interested in being with anyone else. They didn’t tell anyone they were anything more than friends; neither of them saw a need to label it, and certainly not to announce it to anyone else. It was their business, their relationship, theirs to assign the meaning they chose. 

They kept their living arrangements the same for their senior year, and before they knew it they were approaching graduation. Amy had an internship lined up with a congresswoman in DC, and Monica was submitting job offers all over the country hoping to find someone that wanted her. Amy came home one day in April to find her waiting excitedly to share the news that she had been offered a position in California.

“California?” Amy said. “Wow. Congratulations. That’s… far.”

“Yeah,” Monica said, her expression falling slightly. “Yeah it is.”

“It sounds like a great offer though!” Amy said, hoping to rekindle Monica’s excitement. 

“Yeah,” Monica said again, “It’s a really good one… I think I’m gonna take it.”

“Congratulations!” Amy said, leaning in to hug her. 

“Thanks,” Monica said, meeting her for an embrace that took the place of all the things they weren’t going to say.

 

They never did have a real conversation about Monica leaving; there had never been a “What are we?” discussion, and that lack of definition seemed to preclude any variation of a “What happens next?” conversation they might have had. In the same way they seemed to know instinctively what they wanted from each other, they also seemed to know that whatever they were wasn’t going to last past graduation.

So the event came and went, and Amy began her new job in DC, and Monica moved across the country. At first they kept in touch often enough, but time passed and their new careers got busier and busier, and within a year they had stopped speaking completely. Amy thought about what-ifs and could-have-beens far too much during that first year. Eventually she told herself she couldn’t do it anymore. She had to officially label Monica someone from the past and move on with her life. It was strange, and strangely difficult, however, moving on from something that you’d never fully acknowledged was something to begin with. She felt like she had a not-quite void that she couldn’t quite fill. But before long, working for Selina took over her life, and she didn’t have time to wonder about things that might have happened with her not-quite girlfriend.

Monica went through a similar process when she began working for Raviga, and just like Amy, she soon gave herself over to a new life that did not allow her to dwell on the past. She thought about Amy every time she went back to the east coast to visit her family, but it got easier every time to convince herself that Baltimore was just far enough from DC that it wasn’t worth telling Amy she was there.

*

Monica arrives at the bar before Amy and gets them a table. She orders a bottle of wine, because she knows Amy won’t care less what she drinks. After placing the order she sits to wait. She finds herself fidgeting, tapping her foot on the floor and opening and closing apps on her phone for no reason. She tries to read some work emails that have come in in the thirty minutes since she last checked, but she finds she can’t concentrate on anything. 

Amy arrives ten minutes late, apologizing profusely, and Monica smiles and tells her it’s fine. The wine has come by then, and Monica pours Amy a glass. 

“What do you think?” she asks as Amy takes a sip.

“It’s wine,” she replies.

Monica laughs. “I see your taste is just as discerning as it always was.”

Amy shrugs. “You know I tried to care about wine. I just can’t.”

“I know,” Monica says. “You look good,” she adds, because Amy does look good, and Monica is glad to see it. She knows she’s probably killing herself slowly for the sake of her career, expects nothing less of her, but it’s good to see that it’s not immediately apparent how badly she treats herself.

“Thanks,” Amy says, “so do you.”

“Thank you,” Monica says.

Soon they’re talking about work, because that’s ell either of them really have to talk about, and after a few glasses of wine and a few good stories about their respective bosses, Amy says she should be getting back to the veep. Monica nods, but neither of them moves to get up. There’s a question burning in the back of each of their throats and Monica wonders who will give in and ask first. 

It turns out to be Amy, although she seems as if she’s unsure she wants the words to come out of her mouth the entire time she’s saying them. 

“Do you ever… still think about what would have happened if you hadn’t left?” 

“Yes,” Monica says, and Amy nods like this is all she needs to hear. 

“Do you?” Monica asks.

“Yes,” Amy says, and Monica understands why she doesn’t need her to elaborate.

“I’d better go,” Amy says after a pause.

“Yeah,” Monica says as they both stand up and go to hug each other. If they linger longer than necessary, they don’t say anything about it.

Amy turns to leave, but stops when she hears Monica’s voice again.

“It was good to see you Amy.” 

She turns back and smiles. “It was good to see you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> i made a playlist to go along with this fic if you're interested in that: http://8tracks.com/turnerandkane/our-echoes-resonate


End file.
